Web entrepreneurs puzzle on how to cash in on their 'revolution'

For the companies and individuals inhabiting the web's
ever-evolving ecosystem, three big revolutions have taken place
almost unnoticed by outside observers.

The first, they argue, was the initial phase -- or what they
call "Web 1.0" -- when corporations like the BBC, Disney and
established newspapers set up virtual shop and reached out to
Internet readers and viewers.

Now, they say, the time has come for Web 3.0 -- where both sides
will be involved in a complicated tango that is at once a mating
dance and a competition.

And the question they are all asking is: What will this new
phase bring?

The hope, according to many influential players on the web who
gathered at a big European conference on the issue held this week
in Paris, is money, and lots of it.

But there is also a small fear, perhaps fuelled by Google's
staggering 1.65-billion-dollar purchase last month of the popular
YouTube video hosting site, that expectations are too high, and
that the coming Darwinian struggle will be brutal.

Web 2.0 "is like controlled anarchy," said Anthony Rose, the
chief technical officer for the music and movie distributor Altnet
and one of the 1,000 attendees at the two-day Le Web 3 conference
that opened Monday.

It could herald in a new era spreading democracy and "empowering
the end-user" in a way that will shift the power balance between
complacent multinationals and individuals, he said.

But, he added: "The question we're asking is, is the Web 2.0 a
bubble? Will it have come and gone before most people know what it
is?"

The buzz and bustle in the Paris conference hall showed few were
troubled by that prospect, at least right now.

Computer-toting geeks in t-shirts from more than 30 countries
were seen happily pocketing business cards from corporate types
from Yahoo, NewsCorp, Microsoft and various venture
capitalists.

Loic Le Meur, the French web entrepreneur who has organised the
gathering every year since 2004, boasted that it had sold out
within days purely from word of mouth and from Internet
searches.

"I've been fed up for 10 years to see everything happening in
the United States," he said, explaining that he wanted to do
something to reduce the transatlantic gap in web activity.

"We are seeing the birth of an complete economic sector that is
entirely virtual and underestimated in Europe," he said.

An attendee, William Quiviger of Fon, a Spanish-based company
trying to build Wi-Fi users into a global network of free hotspots,
agreed that a "revolution" was underway.

"We're trying to assess in what direction we're going... every
participant here is giving his or her vision of what Web 3.0 is,"
he said.

But as the deep-pocketed companies move on successful niche
websites -- or even ones showing vague promise -- he admitted that
the tone both at these once-informal conferences and in the
start-ups themselves had changed.

"A lot of cynics will say we're selling it out," he said, adding
that was "kinda" how he felt himself.

Florent Wolff, a French venture capitalist wearing a spiffy blue
suit, dismissed that reading and declared the conference "one of
the best events in Europe".

"You have 20 percent big corporations, you have 20 percent
people working in finance, and the rest of the people are mostly
entrepreneurs already with a business or raising money or looking
for an idea," he said.

Recent big deals for web start-ups showed funds were still
flowing freely, he said, adding by way of example that a French
version of the YouTube model -- Dailymotion -- was also on the
brink of being bought.

Still, the problem of how to eke money from these expensive
virtual acquisitions was yet to be resolved and was being masked by
the investment rush.

"The failures -- we don't see the failures yet, because they
still have some funds to spend," Wolff said.

Thuy-Thien Tran, a strategic planner for French ad agency
CLM/BBDO, also seemed stumped by how the new generation of web
businesses were going to cash in.

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